No detectable amount of tritium has been found in fish samples taken from waters near the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, where the discharge of treated radioactive water into the sea began a month ago, the government said Monday.
Tritium was not detected in the latest sample of two olive flounders caught Sunday, the Fisheries Agency said on its website. The agency has provided almost daily updates since the start of the water release, in a bid to dispel harmful rumors both domestically and internationally about its environmental impact.
The results of the first collected samples were published Aug. 9, before the discharge of treated water from the complex commenced on Aug. 24. The water had been used to cool melted nuclear fuel at the plant but has undergone a treatment process that removes most radionuclides except tritium.
A banana naturally has has around 15 Bq of potassium 40. Assuming a volume of 100 mL, mashed bananas have around 400 Bq/L.
Currently, the treated water has around 250 Bq/L, around a fifth of mashed bananas. In other words, a banana smoothie could easily be more radioactive then the water as it was released.
The banana’s potassium 40 has a half life of more then a billion years, so it’s not going anywhere, unlike the tritium who’s amount will half every 11 years. Also, potassium is concentrated by many plants and animals, while tritium is not.
Sample size: 64
Also, are there other things like Caesium-137 that pose a risk?
All that other stuff was filtered out, but the tritium is near impossible to separate, because it is chemically identical to the hydrogen in normal water.
As for caesium, there are still detectable amounts of Cs-137 in most of the word from the thousands of atomic bomb tests. It’s half life is just 30 years, but it will still be detectable for a hundred years or so because of the huge amount we released.
I remember commenting on a post where China condemned Japan for doing this.
I asked ppl there “is this actually bad or is this kind of par for the course of getting rid of the dangers left behind in Fukushima?” And most of them were like “it’s not a common occurrence but it’s not inherently dangerous and it’s not that big of a deal”
To me it looks like the vast majority of objections to this came from strategic propaganda related to domestic relations of China and/or other nations.
Its also classic anti-nuclear power FUD.
I don’t doubt nuclear power works. I just know how humans work. Everything we build we also destroy. Let’s not take the planet with us.
This here is also classic anti-nuclear power FUD.
This here is capitolist FUD, but I’m sure in all your great wisdom think humans can be trusted not to fuck up a 5th time.
There’s nothing more capitalist than pushing coal and oil.
And any rational green energy advocate knows it’ll take us decades to build enough solar/wind to fill the fossil fuels gap, but would only take us a couple years to fill that demand with nuclear and also produce fewer emissions. That’s simple numbers.
So are you just irrational or a coal-snorting capitalist yourself?
Show me this “fossil fuel gap” when it takes a decade for a nuclear power plant to run at full efficiency.
Dangit, now how am I gonna get my piscine superpowers/fish shaped tumors?
Precious tritium
The power of the sun… in the palm of my hand
